Thread: Climate skeptic admits he was wrong to doubt global-warming data

Originally Posted by Hugh Conway

genius and incompetent are in most books. not the republican party of late though, maybe that's the problem?

Large governmental organizations = incompetent, heads of state = evil/maniacal.

I fucking hate this topic because it highlights perfectly all of the problems with humans.

First and foremost willful stupidity, most people understand that putting shit tons of particles in the atmosphere is not a good idea but most people are stupid and don't care. As long as their $$$ shows up every two weeks and they can get cheap ass gasoline fuck GW and fuck anyone that comes after. They'll talk and maybe buy a couple CFL's but beyond that token gesture they don't fucking care.

Second, a complete lack of critical thinking. Terrorism a fucking wild goose chase around the shittiest parts of the world has cost about 2 trillion dollars and has 0% chance of seriously fucking with this country. ZERO, none, nada, they exist because we are decent enough human beings not to carpet bomb their worthless piece of desert. GW on the other hand even if you don't believe in it is at worst a 50/50 proposition. Look to our buddy next door Venus and then figure which of the two is more potentially dangerous. Humans in order to survive are going to have to develop the skill to see their own race from the viewpoint of another. Humans are very bad at these kinds of problems, slow, part and parcel of the $$$ machine, no single actor or group has the ability to fix on their own. This kind of problem is tailor made to fuck us over but we can't see it as most of us are incapable of looking at our built in deficiencies as a race.

Third, all the shit you need to do to fix GW is shit you need to do anyways for classic shitty human reasons like the all important economy. Transportation, electrical generation and food in the EU, US and China . Fix those three things in those three countries and your 90% of the way to fixing CO2. But its expensive and it will kill the economy because I'm a dumb ass with 4 working neurons who can't understand that any money spent in an economy returns money to that economy plus a multiplier effect. We can do this right this fucking second if we actually decide to do so, Germany a little shit compared to this massive fucking potential that exists in the US just did 25% renewable which by the way are so cheap the conventional producers are pissing their pants. They did it because instead of bitching and endless theoretical arguments they put their big boy pants on and did what needed to be done. Imagine what the people who invented the internet and went to the moon could do if they would just fucking do it.

Fourth and perhaps most essential will be the movement away from the self defined sole purpose of existence, money. Money is an agreement between two humans to trade resources in the future on a 1000mph spinning rock circling a fusing ball of gas 93 million miles away at 67,000 mph. That's it, beyond that it is nothing, it has no value it will not find peace and it certainly won't do jack shit when the fucking planet is cooking. Stop giving it the power to run your fucking life.

We can fix this, we have the ability and the technology but we must want to do it because the clock is fucking ticking and every minute we wait it becomes only more difficult with the punishment for failure becoming ever greater....don't worry though the only thing riding on this is the existence of our entire species.

Originally Posted by JimmyCarter

Large governmental organizations = incompetent, heads of state = evil/maniacal.

Here is the weird thing to me in right-wing thought.
In the real world, Large organizations = incompetent, government or private sector makes no difference.

Somehow in right-wing mythology the holy free market gets absolved of normal human fallibility, but the government gets a double dose.
Maybe because I spent decades working for corporations, big and small, I recognize that incompetence is not specific to any sector, but exists in any human endeavor.
Ever hear about Bhopal (20,000 dead from Union Carbide mistake) or thalidomide (thousands of deformed children because a company covered up the facts to make money),etc.,etc.

And despite its' obvious imperfections, government is the only possible opposing force to the market power and shear scale of multi-national corporations.
The founders of the US were very wise with a system of checks and balances, recognizing that "To Err Is Human", so that when one branch of government makes a gross mistake there is another branch to help correct the problem.

But the basic right-wing project is remove all those checks and balances to corporate power (ie., the EPA, the FDA, the SEC, the IRS, the Fed, etc.) and somehow trust to the innate goodness and wisdom of the greedy and self-interested jerks running corporations.
How stupid is that!

You don't need to ignore government's failures to recognize that government is required to help fix and prevent market failures.
Climate change is such a market failure, and no reasonable solution to the problem exists without government intervention.
So the right-wing response is to ignore and deny the problem, because acknowledging physical reality would require contradiction of their religious (and counter-factual) belief in the omnipotence and infallibility of "free markets".

Originally Posted by ArmadaBC

I fucking hate this topic because it highlights perfectly all of the problems with humans.

First and foremost willful stupidity, most people understand that putting shit tons of particles in the atmosphere is not a good idea but most people are stupid and don't care. As long as their $$$ shows up every two weeks and they can get cheap ass gasoline fuck GW and fuck anyone that comes after. They'll talk and maybe buy a couple CFL's but beyond that token gesture they don't fucking care.

Second, a complete lack of critical thinking. Terrorism a fucking wild goose chase around the shittiest parts of the world has cost about 2 trillion dollars and has 0% chance of seriously fucking with this country. ZERO, none, nada, they exist because we are decent enough human beings not to carpet bomb their worthless piece of desert. GW on the other hand even if you don't believe in it is at worst a 50/50 proposition. Look to our buddy next door Venus and then figure which of the two is more potentially dangerous. Humans in order to survive are going to have to develop the skill to see their own race from the viewpoint of another. Humans are very bad at these kinds of problems, slow, part and parcel of the $$$ machine, no single actor or group has the ability to fix on their own. This kind of problem is tailor made to fuck us over but we can't see it as most of us are incapable of looking at our built in deficiencies as a race.

Third, all the shit you need to do to fix GW is shit you need to do anyways for classic shitty human reasons like the all important economy. Transportation, electrical generation and food in the EU, US and China . Fix those three things in those three countries and your 90% of the way to fixing CO2. But its expensive and it will kill the economy because I'm a dumb ass with 4 working neurons who can't understand that any money spent in an economy returns money to that economy plus a multiplier effect. We can do this right this fucking second if we actually decide to do so, Germany a little shit compared to this massive fucking potential that exists in the US just did 25% renewable which by the way are so cheap the conventional producers are pissing their pants. They did it because instead of bitching and endless theoretical arguments they put their big boy pants on and did what needed to be done. Imagine what the people who invented the internet and went to the moon could do if they would just fucking do it.

Fourth and perhaps most essential will be the movement away from the self defined sole purpose of existence, money. Money is an agreement between two humans to trade resources in the future on a 1000mph spinning rock circling a fusing ball of gas 93 million miles away at 67,000 mph. That's it, beyond that it is nothing, it has no value it will not find peace and it certainly won't do jack shit when the fucking planet is cooking. Stop giving it the power to run your fucking life.

We can fix this, we have the ability and the technology but we must want to do it because the clock is fucking ticking and every minute we wait it becomes only more difficult with the punishment for failure becoming ever greater....don't worry though the only thing riding on this is the existence of our entire species.

Awesome. 123456789

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Why do you guys hate America? We are exceptional and have a god given right to act like complete asshole, unlike those socialist Germans that can't even win a war.

Being a global warming denier is sort of like watching "Waiting for Godot" over and over again, hoping he'll show up. Or if you prefer, you can switch Guffman for Godot, and you have the same set of idiots.

Some interesting stuff regarding GW polling:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/...-temperatures/
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/...S-D-11-00044.1

Ends up that political ideologies clouds perception quite a bit (whichever opinion). Obvious, but still interesting. I guess that's why important to go with raw data instead of what Farmer Joe, Random Mag, or pretty much any person on the hard right or hard left has to say.